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‘Communist crimes must be condemned’

MEPS from the new member states are expected, once they take their seats in the assembly, to make supporting a resolution condemning communism andits crimesa priority.

European Voice

6/16/04, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 10:15 AM CET

The centre-right European People’s Party-European Democrats (EPP-ED), Parliament’s largest group, called for such action at its congress in February.

“Nazi crimes have been carefully studied and internationally condemned, something we can’t say about the crimes of the communist regimes,” Latvian former observer to the EPP-ED, Aldis Kuskis, told European Voice.

“Such a resolution would promote a common understanding of history, as western Europeans don’t know what totalitarian communism was and what deportations mean,”he added.

Estonian Prime Minister Juhan Parts echoed such views, saying that, after enlargement, Europe should no longer be divided into “two histories, two pasts”.

The plan also includes establishing a pan-European day for commemorating communist regime victims – but choosing the date could be tricky. Currently, the three Baltic countries honour the tens of thousands of people that were deported to Siberia in 1941 on 14 June, but in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Poland nospecial commemoration daysare observed.

In addition, MEPs mayrequest that an independent body to analyse communist crimes be set up.

Most of the 151 members from EU’s new post-communist states are likely to support the move.

Konrad Szymanski, from Poland’s Law and Justice party, said that a resolution on communism would have a “more political, not a legal character”, declaring that “something was very wrong” with these regimes. He also expressed his party’s support for the EPP-ED’s call for individuals with communist pasts to “refrain from taking up a European post”, if they werepart of the secret police orwere “involved in crimesagainst humanity”.

These demands could prove controversial, however, as countries have adopted different stances on former communists. For example, while in Latvia former communists are not eligible to participate in general and municipal elections, in other countries, such as the Czech Republic, they are permitted to hold office.

But newly elected Czech MEP Jaromir Kohlicek, from the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, believes that Parliament should not adopt a resolution that attempts “to solve problems of the past” because “history shouldbe evaluated by historians,not politicians”.